


take me apart and I’ll flow like water

by frominfinitieswithin



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Braavos, F/M, Mentions of past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:42:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22179481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frominfinitieswithin/pseuds/frominfinitieswithin
Summary: “We can leave here and not look back,” he says, as he steps nearer to her, unsure of how close to get to this sister of his, this sister who had only ever offered him cold, blue Tully eyes and a frost-lined frown that had mirrored her lady mother’s. “We can start over,” he adds softly, and he knows he has her then, can tell by the broken, tear-laced sigh she delivers, her breath visible even in the warmth of Jon’s solar.OR the one where Jon and Sansa escape to Braavos before the BotB.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 22
Kudos: 272





	take me apart and I’ll flow like water

**Author's Note:**

  * For [orangeflavor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangeflavor/gifts).



> ok ok so this is my first fic ever in life for my absolute number one ship in the world and I wanted to explore a universe where Jon and Sansa kind of say ‘screw it’ to all their pain and suffering and go make lives of their own. 
> 
> big big thanks to orangeflavor for inspiring me to even start writing with her amazing fic, as well as all the encouragement and help she offered along the way, she is truly one of a kind. 
> 
> title from Take Me Apart by SYML and here’s a link to my GoT/Jonsa playlist that always manages to inspire me
> 
> https://open.spotify.com/user/12137722304/playlist/33z8asJQA0jRkoipFfD3bQ?si=sLjTtjj4QfeDTe_yM-OTUw

In the end, he cannot give her Winterfell.

She had been a distant memory, of a family he’d once had before his band of brothers took their place, a family once whole. She arrives at Castle Black, with hair kissed by fire and touched by snow, and he almost believes her a ghost, until he’s feeling the tight grip of her fingers at his back, her ragged and shallow breaths warming his throat in the brisk, Northern air.

She is my sister and she is alive, he thinks, as he holds her just as closely, with a hand at her copper tresses and one at her back.

Home, is what she asks him for, along with his forgiveness, once she has settled in his solar with a bowl of warm soup and bread, the flames from the fire painting shadows across her pale face. 

(Forgiveness is something he’d given her long ago, something he would give her a thousand times over if it would bring them both back to a time before they’d left Winterfell).

Before lions had taken their father’s head and Greyjoys and Boltons had ravaged the North they’d known in their childhood. Before he’d bled out in the snow, by the hands of his own brothers, who’d deemed him a traitor for trying to do what he thought was right. 

“I’m tired of fighting,” he tells her, voice pleading and laced with exhaustion. Jon closes his eyes against the warmth of the fireplace and sees the feet of his brothers swaying with the wind as they hung, sees Olly’s feet, dangling, dangling, dangling, much higher than the others.

(He does not think of Rickon. He does not think of Bran).

“We can leave here and not look back,” he says, as he steps nearer to her, unsure of how close to get to this sister of his, this sister who had only ever offered him cold, blue Tully eyes and a frost-lined frown that had mirrored her lady mother’s. “We can start over,” he adds softly, and he knows he has her then, can tell by the broken, tear-laced sigh she delivers, her breath visible even in the warmth of Jon’s solar. 

Now, he stands by her side on a ship heading south, the shoreline of White Harbor growing further away in the distance. Sansa watches as the New Castle gets smaller and smaller from where they stand, with a face as hard as steel and tears that dance on the brims of her eyes. Watches as they leave behind a winter their father had always promised would come. Watches as they leave behind Arya and Rickon and Bran, never knowing what became of the remaining Starks.

(He wonders if she feels him watching her, this sister that has somehow become the only piece of him that remains from before, ever since betrayal had marred his skin only a fortnight prior.)

No, he cannot give her Winterfell, and as he strips down to his tunic on the deck of the ship, shedding his thick, fur cloak and his jerkin, the Southron sun causing his skin to glisten with beads of sweat, he finds he does not regret it.

Sansa learns that even here, on this merchant’s ship meant to carry them far, far, far from their ghosts, sleep does not come easily to her still. She turns her head from where she studies the ceiling of the cabin, and trains her gaze on Jon, who slumbers soundly beside her with his back turned to her. The rocking motion of the boat had caused his breathing to slow hours ago, leaving Sansa with nothing but the darkness, save for the sliver of moonlight that shines through the small cabin window. 

The merchant, who had hastily ushered them onto the boat, on the night they had left the bleak desolation of the Wall behind, had only had one cot to provide them. 

“I can sleep on the floor,” he had offered, eyes not quite meeting hers, as they had both taken in the sea-battered walls of the small cabin. Besides the cot, the room was accompanied only by a small table and chair, in the furthest corner of the room. 

She thinks back on her first night at Castle Black, when she had first sought out the safety of her brother’s furs, nightfall causing a thrum of dread and anxiety to course through her veins. She could still feel Ramsay’s punishing grip on her thighs and his knife at her back, could still feel him shoving her into his furs, as he took what he believed to be his over and over again, even though he was a fortnight’s journey away by then. 

Jon had held her, gingerly wrapping his arms around her, after his pillows had failed to muffle her sobs. He had been nervous to touch her at first. They never had, as children, not with her mother cutting him down with eyes that must have felt as cold as the Northern winds that swirled around them. 

No, this isn’t the first time she’s shared her brother’s bed, she thinks, as she turns towards Jon’s back and winds an arm around his waist, fingers fisting in his sleep tunic. 

Where will we go, he had prompted her, when she inquired what would become of him. What would become of him, now that the place meant to be his home could only serve as a reminder of every wrong turn he had made since leaving Winterfell, so long ago.

As the sleep she so desperately craves begins to seep through her bones, as her forehead rests between the blades of Jon’s shoulders, she finds she doesn’t care where they go from here, as long as she can have this peace.

He doesn’t know where he expected them to end up, doesn’t know where he imagined a boat heading south, south, south might go. When they sail under a man who points his sword towards the sky, with his shield in hand, promising protection to all who pass under his stead, Jon breathes a sigh of relief he didn’t know he had been holding in.

(Sansa lies beside him, in a cot designed for one or a cot designed for lovers, but either way, it is not a cot designed for baseborn brothers to share with their highborn sisters.)

As they settle into their new Braavosi home, Jon wonders what path the gods might forge for him now. He’d been the bastard of Winterfell and then a man of the Night’s Watch, and then a Lord Commander. And then he’d been nothing at all. Nothing until a girl, with hair kissed by fire, had sought him out, with nowhere else to go.

“What happened?” he asks her, as she dons a dress with no sleeves, with her back turned to him, bare arms shining in the light of the blistering, Braavosi sun. There are pale, silvery lines that begin at her collarbone and flow down past the dip of her dress, mapping a path of cruelty that Jon cannot bring himself to fathom. He already knows what happened, already knows what cruel inflictions men might impose on their lady wives on their quest for power, but he still hopes that she might provide a gentler answer than the truth.

(He does not think about how he would put Ramsay into the ground over and over and over again, given the chance, if it could erase every scar that lines her once porcelain skin).

She doesn’t answer him, doesn’t acquiesce his need to understand how to help her overcome the demons that still plague her at night, even once they’ve created their own safe haven on a foreign continent.

But as she sorts through the bushel of lemons Jon brought from the market earlier, as she recites aloud the recipe she’d heard Gage bellow through the kitchens of Winterfell to make her beloved lemon cakes, he finds that maybe, just maybe the demons may be kept at bay for a while. 

“Tell me about the Night’s Watch,” Sansa asks, on a day where the skies open up and pour as heavy as the snow has most likely fallen in Winterfell and the two find themselves stuck inside the house they’ve called home for six moons now.

She’s curled around him under soft linens, with her nose nestled in his throat and her breath hot against his collarbone, and she tries not to dwell on the fact that she would have never laid with Robb in this way. 

(She may have never called Jon brother, in the way she did Robb, but her brother he remains all the same).

“What do you want to know?” Jon retorts, voice slightly hesitant, with his arm wrapped around her and his hands tracing patterns along her scarred back. 

Sansa hadn’t told him what Ramsay did to her. She hadn’t told him all the violent, depraved ways Ramsay had taken her, had hollowed her out and planted something dark deep, deep, deep within her.

But she had seen the scars that lined his chest, seen the dark gashes that had never been given a chance to heal. She’d been told that he had been killed by the very men that were supposed to follow him, days before she’d arrived. 

(She doesn’t think on what would have become of her, if a woman in red and magic she knows little of hadn’t brought him back).

“Everything,” she replies, pulling herself even closer to this long, lost brother of hers. She finds she wants to know everything about him, from how he lived to how he died to how he’s somehow put himself back together again. 

And as she lays in his arms, she wonders if he might somehow do the same for her.

It’s easy to pretend, he thinks, as they walk along the shoreline, with waves lapping at their feet and Sansa letting her hand brush against his, as their bare feet leave imprints in the sand. Easy to pretend that he still looks upon her like a sister whose head had been filled with songs about knights and golden-haired princes instead of a sister who has come back to him in a woman’s body and skin made of steel. 

But it’s at night, where pretense becomes difficult and Jon has to pretend he doesn’t feel the soft skin of her breast brush against his arm, as he wraps himself around her, his chest perfectly aligned against her back. Has to pretend that his thigh has managed to slip between hers on its own accord, in the middle of the night. Has to pretend he won’t wake up hard and straining in his breeches in the morning, trying not to rock into her with his need, as she slumbers besides him. 

(Jon wonders if she pretends too, wonders if years spent with Lannisters and Boltons has made her share the same base desires as him). 

Eventually, she stops thinking of home, stops thinking of the way her mother used to brush her hair before bed or the way Arya and Bran would chase Robb and Jon through the courtyards or the way Rickon would ask for some of her lemon cake, even when he had his own share.

She finds she only thinks of the work she does alongside the baker’s wife, kneading mounds and mounds of dough into loaves of bread that will feed their little part of Braavos. 

She thinks of sun and warmth and a summer that lasts for a lifetime. 

She thinks of dark curls and Stark, grey eyes that rake over her in a way that can hardly be called brotherly anymore.

She thinks of the way she’d felt, the first time Jon had slipped inside of her, with gentle hands unraveling the years of hurt that had been determined to ruin her.

“Are you alright?” he had asked, as he’d kissed a trail from her bare shoulder to the hard peak of her nipple. As he’d kissed the bite marks Ramsay had left on her breasts and palmed at the ruined flesh of her thighs. As he’d lowered his mouth between her legs and she’d choked out his name on a sob, when his tongue had worked her to completion. 

Yes, she had thought, as he’d spilled inside her, with one hand fisted in her hair and the other interlocked with her own. 

Now, after sleep has claimed him and permeated deep into his bones, she thinks of what he’d said at Castle Black, as she traces the scar that lines his eyebrow. 

(“We can start over”). 

She hadn’t wanted to at the time. She’d wanted justice and Winterfell and home, home, home. 

But with the light from the Braavosi sun beginning to peek through the window of their room, as the dawn rises, she finds she is home.


End file.
